Caption: Sulphur extracted from oil. Aerial photograph of stores of sulphur (yellow) that have been extracted from crude oil and bitumen. This is the Syncrude oil processing plant, in the Athabasca Oil Sands, Alberta, Canada. Syncrude began operating in the 1970s. As of 2008, it is the world's largest producer of crude oil from oil sands, extracting hundreds of thousands of barrels a day, with large amounts of sulphur as a byproduct. One of the open pit mine sites, where the oil sands are extracted, is in the background.